Let's be honest here; everyone knows that it is only a matter of time before any best-selling electronic toy gets a 'friendly' version of itself, courtesy of the very enterprising Chinese OEMs. That being said, it is indeed surprising that the Chinese factories would be willing to give Apple's new toy two months of lead time in the market before releasing its own idea of what a wallet-friendly iPad 2 is supposed to be. With only one more month left to the launch of Huadian's iPad 2 clone, does it have what it takes to appeal to consumers who crave both iPad 2's drool-worthy design and performance levels at a mere fraction of the price?

Apple's iPad 2 may have been released to much fanfare al over the world, most cynics will probably be more interested in the fact that it is only a matter of time before the Chinese factories get their hands on the device and start mass producing clones to sell to lower-income consumers who simply want a tablet that looks (and probably feels) like an iPad 2 at only a faction of the cost. As it turns out, we did not have to wait that long after all; word has it that a Chinese OEM known as Huadian is all set to start rolling out its iPad 2 clone some time next month, which is approximately two months after the iPad 2 first launched.

According to a report published by Giz-China, Huadian has been keeping a tight lid on the full list of specifications for its iPad 2 clone, although it did mention that the device will sport a thickness of 8.8mm, which is identical to the actual iPad 2's height. In addition, the clone's main body will be crafted out of a metal alloy to give it a more 'iPad 2-ish' look, and the 9.7-inch touchscreen display will utilize capacitive touch technology and feature a native resolution of 1024 x 768.

On the other hard, the hardware used to power the clone is not much to look forward to. While Huadian has confirmed that the device will come bundled with various standard features such as front and rear facing cameras along with built-in GPS and WiFi capabilities, it would seem that 3G support is non-existant, considering that the rear view of the tablet does not reveal the presence of any slots for a SIM card. In addition, the clone's performance is definitely going to be inferior to the real deal, as it will be powered by an 800MHz AMLogic CPU which is completely and utterly outclassed by Apple's 1GHz, dual-core A5 processor. Last but not least, the clone will be bundled with only 512mb of system memory and 8GB of flash storage. Unfortunately, Huadian had chosen not to reveal any details about the tablet's operating system, but it is entirely plausible that it will be a heavily customized copy of Android made to resemble Apple's iOS that will be preloaded on the clone.

No information about the tablet's pricing has been revealed at this point of time.